JFK's perfidy @ Bay of Pigs 53 yrs. ago

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Fifty-three years ago President John F. Kennedy double-crossed 1,400 Cuban refuges after they had landed in communist Cuba to overthrow the communist dictatorship of Fidel Castro. They had been promised air support and additional supplies and ammo after the landing. JFK betrayed them by denying the support.

World War II hero Admiral Burke pleaded with Kennedy to keep his word:

Camelot’s criminal idiocy finally brought Adm. Arleigh Burke of the Joints Chief of Staff, who was receiving the battlefield pleas, to the brink of mutiny. Years before, Adm. Burke sailed thousands of miles to smash his nation's enemies at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Now he was Chief of Naval Operations and stood aghast as new enemies were being given a sanctuary 90 miles away! The fighting admiral was livid. They say his face was beet red and his facial veins popping as he faced down his commander-in-chief that fateful night of April 18, 1961. "Mr. President, TWO planes from the Essex! (the U.S. Carrier just offshore from the beachhead)" that's all those Cuban boys need, Mr. President. Let me order...!"
JFK was in white tails and a bow tie that evening, having just emerged from an elegant social gathering. "Burke," he replied. "We can't get involved in this."

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Nevertheless, the ivy league liberal Democrat is still quoted for his hypocritical words:

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Completely wrong, though I can't blame you for any of it. Despite the continuing fawning over JFK by today's socialists int he Democratic Party, he was never a liberal. For that matter, RFK was never a liberal, either. Their dad was a staunch conservative, a rum runner during the depression, probably a secret funder of the IRA back in the early to middle part of the last century. Even his hometown paper says Democrats today wouldn't even give JFK the time of day.

The 35th president was an ardent tax-cutter who championed across-the-board, top-to-bottom reductions in personal and corporate tax rates, slashed tariffs to promote free trade, and even spoke out against the “confiscatory” property taxes being levied in too many cities.

He was anything but a big-spending, welfare-state liberal. “I do not believe that Washington should do for the people what they can do for themselves through local and private effort,” Kennedy bluntly avowed during the 1960 campaign. One of his first acts as president was to institute a pay cut for top White House staffers, and that was only the start of his budgetary austerity. “To the surprise of many of his appointees,” longtime aide Ted Sorensen would later write, he “personally scrutinized every agency request with a cold eye and encouraged his budget director to say ‘no.’ ”

On the other hand, he was a Cold War anticommunist who aggressively increased military spending. He faulted his Republican predecessor for tailoring the nation’s military strategy to fit the budget, rather than the other way around. “We must refuse to accept a cheap, second-best defense,” JFK said during his run for the White House. He made good on that pledge, pushing defense spending to 50 percent of federal expenditures and 9 percent of GDP, both far higher than today’s levels. Speaking in Texas just hours before his death, he proudly took credit for building the US military into “a defense system second to none.”

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And that isn't the only thing you got wrong, though again, it isn't your fault. The liberally biased media has not only reframed JFK because they can't stand the conservative, Reaganesque politician that he actually was, but they've also perpetuated a lie about the Bay of Pigs.

L. Fletcher Prouty points out that J.F.K. was mis-lead by C.I.A. director Allen Dulles, who was then fired by J.F.K. The C.I.A. working with the Mafia failed to eliminate Mr. Castro before Bay of Pig's disaster, which was poorly planned and predicted to fail by C.I.A. planner Richard Bissell before the Brigade even hit the Cuban shores. It was later revealed that the air-strike was called off the day before by McGeorge Bundy. But J.F.K. took full responsibility for the debacle and has always been blamed for calling off the air-strike. Check out the book, "Bay of Pigs Declassified."

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Kennedy knew it was going to fail, but he felt he had to keep his word. He withdrew air support knowing it would doom the operation, but it was doomed to start with. Bissell was disavowing it before it even started, because he knew it was beyond redemption. The only thing that could have been done was call it off completely, but the ex-pats from Cuba would have invaded on their own had that been done.

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There is plenty of evidence that moneybags Joe Kennedy favored the Nazi cause.

JFK was a liberal in the sense of Hubert Humphrey.

It is true that JFK blamed the CIA but did anyone think that JFK would take responsibility for his actions?

The invasion was planned by Eisenhower but he left office.

JFK promised air support but at the last minute when the Cubans had landed, JFK cancelled the air support. Nor were the Cubans re-supplied. See the video that I linked above for testimony of this fact.

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Fifty-three years ago President John F. Kennedy double-crossed 1,400 Cuban refuges after they had landed in communist Cuba to overthrow the communist dictatorship of Fidel Castro. They had been promised air support and additional supplies and ammo after the landing. JFK betrayed them by denying the support.

World War II hero Admiral Burke pleaded with Kennedy to keep his word:

Nevertheless, the ivy league liberal Democrat is still quoted for his hypocritical words:

"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty!"

Miami Herald newspaper published a six and a half minute video three years ago on the Bay of Pigs. Warning: Do not read the comments:

So Cuba is under a Communist regime and Florida is the new Cuba, all because JFK blinked for whatever reason! I have always believed that the Bay of Pigs was a disaster for the US and eventually led to the Cuban Missile Crisis!

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So Cuba is under a Communist regime and Florida is the new Cuba, all because JFK blinked for whatever reason! I have always believed that the Bay of Pigs was a disaster for the US and eventually led to the Cuban Missile Crisis!

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The article by Humberto Fontova and the Miami Herald newspaper present the Cuban viewpoint.

The fact of JFK's double-cross was published 53 years ago. JFK never apologized for the deaths he caused and never explained why he double-crossed the men under his command. In fact, JFK never took responsibility for what he did. It may have been Admiral Arleigh Burke who told the public what happened. JFK should have stopped the invasion if he knew that he was going to refuse aid. If JFK did not know until it was too late, then he was incompetent.

Some say that Ike planned the invasion but JFK changed it. I myself do not know about that detail as I am only posting the overall Cuban viewpoint.

There is plenty of evidence that moneybags Joe Kennedy favored the Nazi cause.

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"Moneybags" Joe Sr. (you did know there was a Joe Jr., right?) favored any cause that fattened his bank account, including doing business with the Nazis right up to the point they went to war with the rest of Europe.

Kennedy became ambassador in 1938, the year that Germany marched into Austria to create the Anschluss. Kennedy was unfazed. His biggest fear was not that Hitler would be stopped, but that the West would try to stop him. A second world war, he believed, would have calamitous effects, including imperiling his own children. Better to try and buy off the Fuhrer who would surely prove in the end to be a reasonable chap. Kennedy’s view of events in England was thus similarly blinkered. He idolized Neville Chamberlain and viewed Winston Churchill as a dangerous adventurer, a view that he never deviated from even after World War II had ended.

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Regardless of what old Joe was, John and Robert were more circumspect and certainly more ruggedly patriotic, unlike their father. Which makes your assessment here ...

... incorrect, again most likely because of the image the liberally biased media and the socialist/Marxist leaning Democratic Party have perpetuated. Kennedy was the farthest thing from a liberal. In fact, Time did a piece on this subject last fall, just ahead of the 50th anniversary of his death, correcting that misconception.

As the U.S. prepares to mourn President John F. Kennedy on the 50th anniversary of his assassination next month, it’s worth pausing to remember that one of the things lost in Dallas along with JFK’s life was an accurate picture of his politics.

The myth is on display, among other places, at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, overlooking the site where Kennedy was shot. “Massive new social programs were central to Kennedy’s New Frontier philosophy,” said one exhibit panel when I visited there. Another referred to “Kennedy’s philosophy of using induced deficits to encourage domestic fiscal growth.”

Nonsense. Far from being a big-spending liberal, Kennedy was a conservative by the standards of both his time and today. While he increased military spending, overall he restrained federal outlays. His plan for economic growth emphasized not deficits but tax-rate cuts that he argued would eventually pay for themselves by increasing government revenue. He reduced tariffs in pursuit of free trade, and he took a hard line against communism abroad and at home.

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On April 21, 1961, President John F. Kennedy accepts 'sole responsibility' for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

[audio clip]

“There's an old saying that victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan ... I've said as much as I feel can be usefully said by me in regard to the events of the past few days. Further statements, detailed discussions, are not to conceal responsibility, because I'm the responsible officer of the government, but merely because I, and that is quite obvious, but merely because I do not believe that such a discussion would benefit us during the present difficult situation.”

JFK promised air support but at the last minute when the Cubans had landed, JFK cancelled the air support. Nor were the Cubans re-supplied. See the video that I linked above for testimony of this fact.

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The investigative report on the failure at the Bay of Pigs wasn't made available to the public until 20 years after, and that was 1981. No one cared. It got little to no coverage when it was finally declassified. But in 1993, an author named Michael D. Morrissey wrote an article that for some reason I can't find published anywhere, but there is a text file of it. After studying the mountain of information contained in the report, he wrote:

I believe a close reading of the report shows that the CIA sabotaged their own invasion, the purpose being to put JFK in exactly the position he found himself in: send in the Marines or face disaster. He chose disaster. Two years later, the same thing happened in Vietnam, and again he chose disaster (i.e. withdrawal, anathema to the CIA and the military), but this time he didn't survive.

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Morrissey appears to be suggesting the military and/or CIA had JFK killed, which of course is ridiculous. We discussed that last fall in the "History" forum. I believe it is beyond doubt that Oswald was a lone gunman, unhinged enough to want to kill a president.

Be that as it may, at the end of this piece, Morrissey includes a letter he wrote to Arthur Schlesinger, along with a copy of his article, asking for a critique. Schlesinger replied:

I have just returned from Europe to find your recent letter. I am too busy at the moment to refresh my memories of Bay of Pigs details; but I am sure that the cancellation of the air strike is much overrated as a factor in the outcome. Castro had dispersed his planes after the first strike. Cancelling the later strike made no great difference; there would still have been a tiny invading force facing 200,000 or so of Castro's army and uprising behind the lines or a US invasion force. I agree with you that Dulles probably counted on direct US intervention when the invasion faltered; but I don't think for a moment that the CIA people purposely sabotaged the invastion. The project was a terrible idea, doomed from start to finish--or so it seems to me.

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Completely wrong, though I can't blame you for any of it. Despite the continuing fawning over JFK by today's socialists int he Democratic Party, he was never a liberal. For that matter, RFK was never a liberal, either. Their dad was a staunch conservative, a rum runner during the depression, probably a secret funder of the IRA back in the early to middle part of the last century.

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I doubt that Joe Sr. was a conservative but he was a crook, perhaps with Fascist leanings. JFK was a democrat of his time whether liberal or conservative. I have always believed that Robert Kennedy was a very dangerous man with the ideology and temperament of a dictator!

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I just can't buy that JFK was a conservative by anyone's standards. He was always considered a liberal. He never balanced a budget. Perhaps we could say that he was a cold-war Democrat. The Cubans insist that they were promised air support. If the invasion had been planned by Ike, it would have worked. There is some evidence that Ike knew nothing about it:

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I just can't buy that JFK was a conservative by anyone's standards. He was always considered a liberal.

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What he was "considered" and what he actually was are two different things. A total flip-flop occurred between the Republicans and Democrats, starting with Truman and ending with Lyndon Johnson. Hoover, the last Republican in the White House before Ike, was a liberal, a "chicken-in-every-pot" tax-and-spend "progressive."

Hoover has been forever portrayed by supporters of his successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt – such as New York Senator Chuck Schumer – as a “do nothing” President. In reality, Roosevelt based most of his New Deal on policies that Hoover had already envisioned and enacted. In effect, it can be said that FDR’s New Deal was created by Hoover. Hoover set the stage for FDR’s big government policies and unprecedented amount of economic intervention. By the way, Hoover's budget didn't balance either.

After the war, along came Truman, a conservative both fiscally and socially, as well as having an aggressive foreign policy. He was the last president to have a truly balanced budget. Ike was more like Harry than he was like Herbert, and while he and Truman despised one another, they saw eye to eye on a great many issues, both foreign and domestic. And guess what? Ike never balanced a budget, either.

Kennedy and Eisenhower were the tipping point. Ike was somewhat more socially liberal than JFK, but neither was interested in spending people out of povery. Kennedy's mantra was exactly what he said in his inaugruration address: "Ask now what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." You can believe that or not, but Kennedy was no liberal, nor even a "cold-war Democrat," whatever that is.

Most of the cold war the Democrats from Carter forward attempted to appease, not confront, the Russians, ala Neville Chamberlain in dealing with the Nazis. That wasn't Kennedy. Or perhaps you forgot about the Cuban Missile Crisis?

And they were. But as Schlesinger told Morrissey in a reply to that article I posted yesterday, even with the air support, the tiny invading force would have been met by 200,000 Cuban troops. Air support wouldn't have made a dent in the Cuban response. It was a lost cause and Kennedy knew it, and he wasn't going to be drawn into a land war in Cuba by Dulles at CIA.

If the invasion had been planned by Ike, it would have worked. There is some evidence that Ike knew nothing about it:

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And that's a large pile of male bovine excretory matter. The CIA took the operational plans to Ike on 17 March 1960, according to Robert E. Quirk, who in 1993 wrote the book Fidel Castro. You can look it up online at the Library of Congress website, ISBN 978-0-393-03485-1. Ike approved it the same day.

It was a plan put together by the CIA's Alan Dulles, no military expert whatsoever, yet he didn't seek input from the military. It was solely a CIA operation, which was ignorant beyond belief, and Ike's approval of the op was uncharacteristically naïve of him. It should never have been approved, and Kennedy should have been given more than three weeks' notice, but Eisenhower was miffed Nixon hadn't won. In fact, he spent most of the fall of 1960 prepping Nixon to take over the office in January. He was reluctant to work with Kennedy, though ultimately he had no choice. By the time he informed JFK of the invasion plans, it was too late to call it off. Kennedy's decisions, though disasterous for the invading force, were proper.

Dulles wanted a land war to dethrone Castro, seemingly oblivious to the fact that would bring Russia into a shooting war directly with the United States. That was insane. He even continued to bring that idea to the White House eighteen months later during the missile crisis. Dulles' obsession would have started World War III, and it would have been nuclear.

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First of all, Ike did not have control of Congress except for a couple of years. Therefore, he is not totally responsible for the spending of the 1950s.

Secondly, JFK did have control of Congress and still did not balance the budget.

Finally, Ike apparently said that the plan was all Kennedy's and that he had nothing to do with it. That would overthrow the self-serving Kennedy historians.

As for Dulles and Admiral Burke, they took the blame for JFK. The Cuban eye-witnesses in the Miami Herald video linked above said that they were promised air support in training and that the planes were there and the pilots ready. The CIA operatives also said that they were double-crossed by JFK.

The Cuban army was about 25,000 men. The Brigade 2506 inflicted 3,000 casualties on them in a sort of pyrrhic victory before they ran out of ammo and went into prison, a couple of them for 25 years.

JFK double-crossed the Cuban refugees. His social program, The New Frontier, was the foundation for LBJ's The Great Society.

Finally, Ike apparently said that the plan was all Kennedy's and that he had nothing to do with it.

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I posted proof that is incorrect. Ike approved the plan on 17 March 1960. That's a matter of historical record. No effort to rewrite history can change that. On another point, training for the invasion began a year before the invasion, so how could Eisenhower possibly by ignorant of it? And how could Kennedy have been in any position to order such training?

Clearly you suffer from "rose-colored-glassitis." You can't accept that a staunch conservative like Ike would be that stupid. But "staunch conservatives" have done a lot of stupid things over the years, and this was one of them. Ike was a military veteran and operation-planning mastermind. But he barely looked at Dulles' idiotic plan before signing on to it. That's his mistake, and no one else's.

The Cuban eye-witnesses in the Miami Herald video linked above said that they were promised air support in training and that the planes were there and the pilots ready. The CIA operatives also said that they were double-crossed by JFK.

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I don't argue the points you make about air support, promises made, or JFK's decisions to back away from the operation. I argue that any of it is irrelevant. With air support, less than 2,000 invaders would have been met at the beach by 200,000 Cuban troops, regardless. It was a lost cause, it was Ike's lost cause, and it was Kennedy's debacle, because Ike wasn't in office anymore. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the invasion was doomed before it ever got off paper. It was a stupid idea.

... and a 200,000 man militia, which is the same thing as a national guard organization, relative to a communist country. In addition, there were 9,000 armed police in Cuba, and they were armed like the military. There were 1,500 invaders. Even if the militia and the police were ordered to stand down, much of the tide-turning counter attack was carried out by military academy cadets at Matanzas. There is no way air support was going to overcome the numbers in favor of Cuba, Kennedy knew it, Ike probably knew it too. But it was Dulles' baby, and it was badly planned. I can't help if it you won't accept that.

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JFK was a liberal. Ike said that he was middle of the road and he was far more conservative than JFK, who could not get his Great Society program through Congress. LBJ said that he was passing JFK's program.

Nor was JFK a fiscal conservative. The Democrats have been big spenders since 1932. Truman was the only social conservative of the Democrat Presidents.

I don't know what Ike did in 1960 but Ike said in 1965 that the plan was not his. Perhaps Ike signed off on the idea.

What the Cubans faced at the Bay of Pigs were Russian planes and tanks given to Castro. American air support was supposed to have knocked them out.

I disagree with your disparagement of Ike and I disagree with your Kennedy viewpoint that it was Dulles, a great American, who failed. It was JFK who failed.

How do you explain that the Cubans alone among Hispanics are Republicans?

New Member

Ike said that he was middle of the road and he was far more conservative than JFK, who could not get his Great Society program through Congress. LBJ said that he was passing JFK's program.

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Did it occur to you LBJ lied? Because he did. The "Great Society" was strictly LBJ's liberal pap. Kennedy's "New Frontier" was simply raising the minimum wage and increasing Social Security benefits. He raised money for research into mental illness -- his sister had Downs' syndrome and the affliction needed to be studied and services for the mentally handicapped needed to be improved. He approved legislation that allocated funds to develop impoverished rural areas. Farm country had languished in near-poverty since the Dust Bowl and the Depression. He showed approval for the civil rights movement by supporting James Meredith's attempt to enroll at the University of Mississippi and by ordering his Attorney General, brother Robert Kennedy, to protect the freedom riders in the South.

He did wish to protect millions of acres of wilderness lands from developments, and provide federal funds to elementary and secondary schools. He also was the architect of Medicare, which was embraced by Congress after his death. But prior to his assassination, Congress did not cooperate, that is true. But none of these proposals were the radical socialist poppycock that LBJ labeled JFK's in an effort to get what were entirely his agenda passed. The only good thing LBJ did was get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, but he even had to label that as JFK's to get the votes.

Nor was JFK a fiscal conservative. The Democrats have been big spenders since 1932. Truman was the only social conservative of the Democrat Presidents.

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This is just pure ignorance of history. Both Truman and Kennedy attempted to get Reagan-style tax cuts passed, but a liberal Congress of both Democrats and Republicans would not pass Truman's. Kennedy managed to arm-twist and brow-beat his reduced tax package through Congress, which historians have continued to erroneously identify as "conservative." The Souther Democrats were the only conservatives in Congress then, and they were not a strong enough block to get anything passed. They did manage, under the old filibuster rules, however, to keep the CRA of '64 off the floor of the Senate and House until spring of 1965.

What the Cubans faced at the Bay of Pigs were Russian planes and tanks given to Castro. American air support was supposed to have knocked them out.

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Again, an ignorance of history. The Cuban Air Force was not sufficiently trusted by the Soviets to yet supply Russian aircraft. Most of the Cuban Air Force was old U.S. B-26s, sold to Batista after WWII, and a few even-then ancient MiG-19s.

I disagree with your disparagement of Ike and I disagree with your Kennedy viewpoint that it was Dulles, a great American, who failed ...

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I know that. It has been obvious these last few days. Your disagreement doesn't change history. Dulles was a good intelligence director. He was a lousy military planner, as the Bay of Pigs operation proved. He wanted to keep the op as secret as possible, therefore he didn't want to involve Pentagon planners. He would have been far better off if he had, but that's perfect 20/20 hindsight.

How do you explain that the Cubans alone among Hispanics are Republicans?

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Some of them made the same mistake you do in blaming JFK for a Dulles/CIA fiasco. They became better-aligned Republicans, however, after the Clinton/Albright debacle with Elián González being returned over Republican objection to his father in Cuba.

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**if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

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**if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"Camelot’s criminal idiocy ..." Humberto Fontova

You can have the last word, TND.

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I'm concerned about those things, too. That doesn't make me a liberal. One can be concerned about those things, even advocate for something rational to be done, and be a conservative. Kennedy had no desire to throw money at poverty, or anything else. Like Reagan, he championed solutions from the private sector by building a strong economy and a strong defense. I'll let Rush Limbaugh have the last word:

JFK loved America. He was proud to be an American. And you'd call that politician JFK. That's who he was. We've played the sound bites of him advocating tax cuts. He was not in any way a liberal as you know liberals today. In fact, there are people who have engaged in predicting what would have happened the next two years if Kennedy had lived. And some of the best thinking on this -- here's the thing. The sad thing about this is you can't tell the truth about the Kennedy presidency. JFK's been martyred. This PR image of Camelot has been created and people don't want to believe anything other than what they believe. But the fact is that the only reason Kennedy went to Dallas was he was in dire straits of maybe not even getting the Democrat nomination ...

There's a new book out by a guy named Ira Stoll, S-t-o-l-l called "JFK, Conservative," and here's the Amazon description of the book: "As Ira Stoll convincingly argues, by the standards of both his time and our own, John F. Kennedy was a conservative. His two great causes were anticommunism and economic growth." That does not fit with the Democrats of today, folks. It just doesn't.

"His tax cuts, which spurred one of the greatest economic booms in our history, were fiercely opposed by his more liberal advisors" within his administration. "He fought against unions. He pushed for free trade and a strong dollar. And above all, he pushed for a military buildup and an aggressive anticommunism around the world." In fact, do you know where Kennedy was going to speak in Dallas? The Trade Mart. That's where he was going.

After the motorcade finished, he was heading to the Dallas Trade Mart to make a speech. He was huge on free trade. "He fought against unions. He pushed for free trade and a strong dollar. And above all, he pushed for a military buildup and an aggressive anticommunism around the world." Hello, Vietnam. This guy, Ira Stoll, says, "Indeed, JFK had more in common with Ronald Reagan than with LBJ."

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